Free Telling Lies to Alice by Laura Wilson Page B

himself on the cobblestones. “I thought it was going to attack me. It kept backing into the furniture and barking.”
    “He likes the sound of his own voice, that’s all.”
    “Well, I don’t. I’ve got a headache. That thing clomping about doesn’t help, either.”
    Pablo tossed his head up and down and Jack got up and retreated to the kitchen doorway.
    “What’s wrong with it?”
    “Nothing, he’s just hot.” I slid off. Pablo took himself over to the trough.
    “You’re not going to let it wander about like that, are you?”
    “Course not. He’s going in the field with the other one.”
    Jack watched while I untacked Pablo and sponged the sweaty bits, then followed us to the gate where my old grey horse was dozing in the sun with his back sagging like a hammock and his chin resting on his favourite fence post.
    “What’s that one called?”
    “Nelson. He’s blind in one eye.”
    “He’s got all four legs, though. Unless one of them’s wooden.”
    “He laughs when you kiss him. Watch this.” I brushed Nelson’s pink, whiskery nose with my lips. Immediately, he lifted his head and curled his lip, showing his teeth.
    “That’s laughing?”
    “Yes.”
    “Perhaps I should start telling jokes to horses. Humans don’t seem to find me funny anymore.”
    We stood together by the fence and looked across the field. “How did you find me, Jack?”
    “Looked in the phone book. I was quite surprised you were listed.”
    “From before. When I thought I was going to live here. But if you found my number, why didn’t you just ring?”
    “I thought you’d tell me to get lost.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “Would you have?”
    “I don’t know. No,” I said quickly. “I wouldn’t.”
    “Why did you marry that cunt?”
    “Jeff? He isn’t.”
    “Isn’t what?”
    “What you said he was.”
    “Say it.”
    “No.”
    “Don’t be such a prude.” Jack nudged me hard in the ribs. “Say it!”
    “Stop being childish.”
    “He gave you a hard time, didn’t he?”
    “He’s got nothing on you, Jack, believe me.”
    “Touché. But you can tell me—if you want to, that is.”
    “Oh, just . . .” The bizarre thing was, I almost did want to tell him. I’ve never really talked to anyone about what happened with Jeff, not even girlfriends. When I married him, two years after Lenny died, I thought I wanted to settle down—security, children, all that stuff . . . a normal life. But somehow the . . . impetus . . . to have all those things . . . just wasn’t there. For either of us. When I told Jeff I’d found out about his girlfriends, he said, “I’m surprised it took you so long to guess,” as if we’d been playing some sort of game. I think he was angry about being found out, more than anything—certainly not apologetic: I remember him leaning against the draining board in our kitchen and saying, “Come on, Alice, you know the score.” Which I evidently hadn’t, but I’d thought, you know, we were married and everything, so . . . I hadn’t slept with anyone else. Hadn’t wanted to. Actually, I think that was part of the problem—I’d gone off the whole thing, really. I don’t mean just sex, although that was pretty much going through the motions. I’m fairly sure Jeff never noticed, he wasn’t that kind of guy, but I think he knew that my heart wasn’t in the relationship, and that must have hurt. . . . Yes, he’d behaved badly, but I should never have married him in the first place. Jeff wasn’t Lenny, and I should never have tried to pretend that he was.
    Don’t, said a little voice inside my head. Don’t tell Jack anything. “It didn’t work out, that’s all,” I said. “We didn’t have much in common.”
    “Touched a nerve, didn’t I? I didn’t mean to.”
    “Yes you did.”
    “Don’t say that, sweetheart. Some people just aren’t meant to be together. Val and I . . . we’ve never had a lot in common, either, except the children. Do you know what she did